Update and Adjustments

(WARNING: The following post contains personal information about my life.  If you don't want to know more about my personal life stop reading!)

It's been a few days since my last update.  Some people, sometimes including me, have wondered if I have completed  or given up on my journey.  I have not.  I'm still trekking, but I'm realizing I have to make some adjustments.

Expectations.  Expectations can be tough.  Expectations can propel people, but sometimes they can be hinder.  Right now because I'm not meeting my expectations I'm finding it hard to keep moving.  The silly thing is even though I'm not meeting my (perhaps unrealistic) expectations I'm still making good progress.  I have lost 5 pounds in the past week and I'm sticking to my workout routine (C25K).  I've had victories, but I'm not meeting my expectations...

So what are my expectations?  Well, I guess the easy answer to this are my stated goals.  But it's not quite that easy...  I guess one way to put it is that I have secret goals or secret expectations:  Perfection.  Newsflash:  I'M NOT PERFECT!  So despite doing well on some of my goals, and sometimes falling short on others I get discouraged and want to stop moving.  It's not like I have consciously set these goals, but I still expect myself to live up to my stated goals perfectly.  But I am not.

Sometimes my journey seems like I've stated that I'm going to walk to the moon, or some other ridiculous goal.  Maybe walking to the moon is possible, but I certainly don't know how to do it, and for me it is impossible.  But is eating well and exercising for me really equivalent to walking to the moon?  Perhaps not, but sometimes it sure feels like it.

Last time I was serious about living a healthier lifestyle and followed through for about 9 days I learned something about myself.  I learned that I have an eating disorder.  I am a compulsive over-eater or binge eater.  I didn't even know this was a real thing until I started trying to figure out why I was doing what I was doing:  Eating enormous meals - eating until I was painfully full - almost daily.  We're talking about meals of up to 4700 calories!  Almost in one sitting, and of course always alone...  I would do this one day and then be in pain and say to myself that I would never do it again... and then I would do it the next day.  I discovered what is known as Compulsive Overeating or Binge Eating.  The symptoms I found are as follows and come from nationaleatingdisorders.org:

Binge eating disorder is a severe, life-threatening disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of compulsive overeating or binge eating. In binge eating disorder, the purging in an attempt to prevent weight gain that is characteristic of bulimia nervosa is absent.

Behavioral Characteristics:

-Recurrent episodes of binge eating
-Eating much more rapidly than normal
-A sense of lack of control over eating during binge episodes
-Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry
-Hoarding food
-Hiding food and eating in secret; e.g., eating alone or in the car, hiding wrappers
-Eating until feeling uncomfortably full
-Eating throughout the day with no planned mealtimes

This describes me pretty very well.  Additionally there are mental and emotional characteristics that describe me all too well.  Granted, this is all self-diagnosed, but I think I'm pretty good at knowing, identifying, and objectively thinking about my behaviors and emotional states (at least after the fact).

In my research I learned that treating eating disorders is most effective when coupled with counseling.  But sometimes I think it just comes down to self-control issues.  I think I should be able to control myself, but I'm continuing to prove to myself that this isn't the case.  I guess this "journey" is a last ditch effort to prove to myself that I do have control... but it's showing the opposite.

But maybe I'm just setting myself up for failure with my goals and expectations.  To be healthier do I really need to go from 4700 calories a day to 1200?  How are my body and mind going to react?  Maybe instead of this drastic diet change I need to try a less drastic one.  In the long run, the 1200 calorie diet will help me lose weight more quickly, but if I don't make it to the long run it certainly won't.  But if I do a normal 2200 or so calorie/day diet it will still be an improvement and maybe I won't convince myself that I'm starving thus triggering the binge eating episodes.

Again, in the long run I won't see results as quickly, but it seems like a more doable option.  I might actually be able to make it to the long run.  In our society we are in love with quick fixes.  But my condition wasn't a quick process and overcoming it won't be either.

So now what?  I'm not sure... I think I need to go back to my SMART goals.  The A stands for Attainable.  I think that some of my goals are not-so-attainable, at least for me for right now.  I need to reassess my journey;  where I'm going and how I'm going to get there.